There are barbarians who seize this dog, who so prodigiously surpasses man in friendship, and nail him down to a table, and dissect him alive to show you the mezaraic veins... Answer me, Machinist, has Nature really arranged all the springs of feeling in this animal to the end that he might not feel? Has he nerves that he may be incapable of suffering?

It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge.

The safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.

Do you think... that men have always massacred each other, as they do today? Have they always been liars, cheats, traitors, brigands, weak, flighty, cowardly, envious, gluttonous, drunken, grasping, and vicious, bloody, backbiting, debauched, fanatical, hypocritical, and silly?

Dogs, monkeys, and parrots are a thousand times less miserable than we are.

Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

To make a vow for life is to make oneself a slave.